Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

A recent study by IHL Consulting Group indicates that self-checkout and other self-service systems generated almost $128 billion in sales last year, up about 80 percent over a year before. Projections are that these sales figures will continue to grow exponentially—up 73 percent this year and then a projected 88 percent next year.

Although the numbers are clearly rising quickly, self-checkout programs are by no means universally successful. Some retailers are enjoying huge success while others question whether it will ever work for them.Read more...

Self-service retail checkout systems are among the hottest growing technology segments, but the new devices are still in an experimental phase and suffer from the startup hiccups of any new technology.Read more...

Retail self-checkout is a great way to use the technology, but retailers are giving false reasons for why they support it. When you're a retail executive in today's razor-thin-margin environment, you do what you can barely afford and then pray it supports your strategy. Pricing is no longer something most retailers can determine, as a strict competitor reality often dictates whether your per-item profit is one or two cents. Read more...

Putting control of checkout into the hands of the consumer is nightmarishly frightening for many retail executives—including that part where the consumers figure out how much money they are going to give the retailer. "Loss Prevention would love to have security gates and frisking" at the self-service terminals, said Dusty Lutz, the FastLane product manager for NCR Corp., who added that such requests are clearly not practical. "How much do you put into a system for security?" Read more...

Envision opening a refrigerator, making a tuna-fish sandwich and using the last of the mayonnaise. You scan the empty jar on the freezer door for two seconds and then recycle the sticky jar.

Three days later, you walk into your local grocery store and grab a cart, which displays a list of everything you need. Some of the items came from a list you e-mailed to your store, others are things the cart thinks you're probably out of (you haven't purchased milk in two weeks and your last portion had an expiration date of eight days ago), and some are things that your refrigerator told your shopping cart about. Read more...

Shoppers in the 2004 holiday season were going to face a blizzard of next-generation kiosks, about three times as many of the devices as they saw in 2003, said a report from analyst firm Frost & Sullivan.

The report cames as retailers learned that it's better to give than to receive, especially when CRM (customer relationship management) and self-service are involved.Read more...